


Phantasm

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (All the Ardyn psycho-stuff you get the picture), Altered Mental States, Blood and Violence, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:55:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10154117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: It had been days spent on the empty train, crawling towards the Empire. Each night was filled with a new nightmare about what the chancellor was doing to Noctis while Nyx wasn’t there to protect him.





	1. wraith

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156915137632/omg-even-though-im-a-diehard-noctluna-fan-i-love) for an anonymous request.

It was tearing him apart. Noctis was begging him to save him, but no matter how hard he beat on the glass, Nyx couldn’t reach him.

The daemon hooked long, dripping black talons into the prince’s back, dragging him screaming back to the edge of the darkness. Everything was in monochrome, but the blood was still so bright; horrifically red in the gloomy light. A dark banner of it was painted beneath Noctis as the monster pulled him back, running in thick veins down his arms and dotted across his face.

There were bloody, fist-shaped breaks in the glass from where Nyx had tried to punch through. The wall went on into infinity on either side. He couldn’t see where it ended or where it began. He couldn’t see anything but the blackness and the blood. And he couldn’t hear anything but Noctis. He couldn’t hear his own voice, he had no idea if Noctis could hear him, but his throat felt raw. He must have been screaming. Someone must have been able to hear him.

If he was calling for help, no one was coming. Not to help him break the glass and not to help save Noctis from that _thing_.  It used to be Ardyn, something told him. That twisted, black-eyed monster, weeping with scourge and crawling from the shadows like a beast had once looked like a man. Its teeth were crooked and sharp, ribbons of black tar oozing from drawn back lips, grinning hungrily at its prey as it tried to escape.

Noctis scraped at the ground, an opaque plane of nothing, trying to pull himself out from under the thing’s claws, trying to reach Nyx through his own blood. His eyes were wild with panic, stark gray in the bleached light. His gaze pleaded desperately with Nyx, his hands twisting through empty air towards him, shaking with pain. All tears and blood and screaming, the screaming, please, _please_ , stop screaming…

The daemon growled and smiled, digging its horrible blackened teeth into the juncture between the prince’s neck and shoulder. Noctis wailed in agony, the sound peeling against Nyx’s ears. Sobs gurgled in pink bubbles at the corner of his lips. Claws raked down his sides, tearing his shirt, blood everywhere, practically black in his hair, so much _red_ across his skin.

The noises were the worst, reduced to the choked mewling of a trapped animal. It only made the daemon maul him more, relishing the sounds like it was music, lashing jagged scarlet lines across Noctis’s back to make him scream louder and struggle less.

Nyx’s fist bled with shards of glass, pounding the same spot over and over and over again. He couldn’t stop. Even if it was doing nothing, his arm wouldn’t stop moving. His hand kept bleeding and Noctis kept crying and the daemon kept laughing and nothing was changing. He couldn’t reach him. He couldn’t save him. The thing was killing him, Noctis was _begging_ him, “Nyx, please, _Nyx_ …”

The daemon twisted him over, curling its claws inside Noctis’s mouth and pushing his head back to expose his throat, salivating scourge across the white skin, making Noctis whine in terror. The daemon’s jaws sunk slowly into his neck, pinpricks of yellow eyes grinning at the muffled cries ripping from the prince beneath it.

Noctis stared and stretched back for Nyx. Nyx pressed his hands to the glass, touched the fingers he couldn’t reach beyond it. The daemon jerked its head and _snapped._

Nyx woke up feeling like he couldn’t breathe, bolting upright to fight air into his aching lungs. Sweat clung to his chest, a sickly shine in the moonlight dancing through the sleeping carriage. The rhythm of the train bumping around him made him nauseous. It should have reminded him that there would be no one in his bed when he reached next to him, grasping for Noctis only to fist flat sheets.

Ardyn stole him from Nyx. Taunted all of them to come and rescue him. Was holding him in Niflheim, trying to prove some twisted point. It had been days spent on the empty train, crawling towards the Empire. Each night was filled with a new nightmare about what the chancellor was doing to Noctis while Nyx wasn’t there to protect him.

Ignis told him over and over again that he was imaging the worst. That Noctis could fight for himself if he had to and that Nyx’s nightmares were far worse than whatever was being done to Noctis in reality. Gladio joked that he would probably be waiting right outside the Keep when they arrived. There was a quaver to his chuckle though. And Prompto’s silence beneath all of the assurances spoke louder than any words.

Nyx roared in fury and pelted the pillow at the wall, throwing off the sheets and pacing the car. The close air slowly started to cool his skin, but didn’t make his heart stop racing hot. They weren’t moving fast enough. They were wasting time, Ardyn was hurting him, Nyx _knew_ this, no matter what the others said, Noctis was hurt, he was screaming, they needed to _move_ , why weren’t they _moving_?

Nyx threw on a shirt and marched to the door, just about ready to charge down the length of the train to boot the engineers out of their seats and drive the damn thing himself. He crashed into Prompto on his way out, nearly bowling the smaller man onto his ass. His knuckles had been curled, prepared to knock before Nyx appeared. He flinched back in fright, whether from the abrupt movement of the door or Nyx’s thunderous expression, he didn’t really care.

“What,” he said through his teeth.

“Just wanted to check on you,” Prompto said, having a hard time holding Nyx’s glare. “I thought I heard, um…”

He glanced into the room and noticed the pillow thrown onto the floor, the sweaty ball of sheets cast to the bottom of the mattress. He glanced fleetingly at Nyx to notice the heavy rise and fall of his chest and the strain of his neck, holding back a scream that Nyx hadn’t fully decided who he was going to throw at yet.

“You good?” Prompto asked in a small voice.

“Oh, yeah, peachy, thanks for asking.”

Nyx pushed him out of the way and started down the hall, fully prepared to stuff the engineers into a supply closet and take the controls himself.

“Where are you going, man?”

“To drive this damn thing into the guts of Zegnautus.”

“Dude, come on…”

He felt Prompto’s fingers on his arm like pinpricks of ice and spun around to brush them off. He was too angry and too scared to remember that none of this was Prompto’s fault. He wasn’t the one Nyx was angry at. He was angry at himself and he was angry at Ardyn and the whole damn Empire, maybe even the whole damn world. But that didn’t stop him from yelling at the gunman anyway.

“I’m sick of sitting on our hands while that bastard does gods only know what to Noctis. I’m sick of this train, I’m sick of everyone acting like everything’s fine, I’m sick of being told that I’m just making up the worst case scenario when we have no idea what the hell that son of a bitch has in store for him. I can’t do nothing, I’m going crazy in here…”

He was rambling, he knew, but he couldn’t stop. He was prowling up and down the aisle, socked feet punching the wooden floors, hands opening and closing because he didn’t know what to do with them. He was afraid if he formed them into fists, he might punch Prompto just because he was there. He was afraid of going back to bed and imagining something even worse than what he already had. He’d never been this afraid of anything in his life, and nothing but saving Noctis, seeing that he was okay, wrapping him up in his arms and never letting him out of them again could stop him from being afraid.

“Everyone’s scared, Nyx,” Prompto said. “Gladio and Ignis are better at hiding it, but they’re going out of their minds right now. We’re all on edge. But, at least we know Noct’s alive, right? That’s something.”

Prompto called his gun from the Crystal’s power to assure Nyx that the prince must still be alive. It did little to comfort him.

“We’re not gonna know what happened until we get there. If it’s bad, we’ll fix it, right? It’ll be hard if it is, yeah… No one wants to think about Noct getting hurt. We just have to have faith that he’s not.”

Faith was for people who trusted the Six to hear their prayers. Nyx had stopped having faith in them since Galahd. Prompto could tell that his comfort was having no effect on the glaive. He bit his lip and attempted a pitiful assurance instead.

“We’re almost there.”

Nyx glared at him, but ran out of energy to keep it there. He looked out at the passing landscape beyond the train, waiting for it to turn into something that might resemble Niflheim. They still weren’t moving fast enough.


	2. spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157169375722/i-loved-how-you-filled-in-my-prompt-about-ardyn) for various anonymous requests.

He kept having to reach out and touch the others to make sure he wasn’t trapped in another nightmare. The Keep was so eerily quiet that it didn’t feel real. And it was so dark and gray that it certainly looked like the endless purgatory that had since constructed itself inside of Nyx’s dreams. But he would brush against Prompto in the dimness, get a quizzical flash of blue in the blackness, and he would know that he wasn’t sleeping.

It was an agonizingly slow trek through the quiet, twisting structure. Every corridor looked the same as the last. Every door seemed to be locked, every way around those doors got them more and more lost, and some doors even seemed to open and close by themselves as they passed through.

Nyx didn’t know if it was by luck or by some sinister design that they eventually stumbled into the dungeons. Regardless of whether or not their fortune was intentional or accidental, all of Nyx’s trepidation went out the window once they found Noctis.

A collective “Noct” sighed throughout the group and Nyx nearly tripped over Prompto as they all pressed up against the bars of the cell door. Noctis lay on the mangy cot within, motionless, his wrists shackled together, but otherwise looking unharmed.

“Stand back!” Prompto warned. “I’ll shoot the lock off!”

“With what, gunslinger?”

Nyx’s relief turned the words wry, happily exasperated by the kid’s heroic exuberance. Prompto growled in frustration when he remembered that none of them could summon their weapons since arriving at the Keep, a moment that had made all of them freeze in panic for fear of what that might mean for their prince.

“We’re gonna have to do this the old fashioned way,” Nyx said, cracking his knuckles and fishing through his pockets for the Swiss army knife his mother passed onto him before she died.

There was a lockpick in there somewhere, yup, that’s the one. A quick shush to Gladiolus’s objection about how all the locks were digital so, how was that even going to work, and a little precision slithering between the door jamb where the lock was and, voila! An oddly chipper beep, the door swung inward, and they all piled in, too.

“Is he…?” Prompto was afraid to ask, and Nyx was more afraid to find out so, it was Gladiolus that ended up checking for a pulse, braver than all of them.

He gave a sharp nod and a party-wide breath was released that none of them had realized they were holding. Prompto leaned over to shake Noctis awake while Nyx knelt down to the iron fetters clamped around his wrists. He tried not to let his gaze linger too long on the pink rawness of Noctis’s skin beneath them, or on the rage the sight boiled inside him, instead quickly finding a spot he could shimmy his pick into to get them off of him as soon as possible.

Prompto’s emphatic pushes on Noctis’s shoulder eventually roused the prince. Just as Nyx found the release for the shackles, a drowsy grunt of wakefulness came from Noctis and then, a sudden pull back.

Prompto flinched at the sudden recoil and Nyx blinked in confusion when the lock was suddenly not in front of him anymore. When he looked up, Noctis had crowded himself into the furthest corner of the cot, trapping himself in the narrow crook between the two adjoining walls. His eyes were blown wide with fear, drained to the point of looking silver in the dismal light. A violent stutter shook through him, making his words a short, tight clutter.

“What are you doing?”

Dread immediately writhed through Nyx’s stomach, like poison curdling his blood. He was fearful once again that he might be in the middle of another nightmare because when Noctis stared at him, he was afraid. Afraid of _Nyx_.

He glanced at the others and they looked helplessly back at him, shock as plain on their faces as it was in him. Nyx wet his lips and turned back to Noctis, dragging the side of his mouth up in a smile. Playing at being unaffected, and trying to make him feel safe. Just like he always did.

“I’m getting you out of those, what does it look like?”

It was too hasty of a move and he knew it right before he reached out for him again. Noctis snapped back, scraping into the corner of the walls as if he could get any further away.

“Why?” he asked, voice shaking with suspicion.

“What kind of question is that?” Nyx tried to laugh. “Come on, Noct, I just want to help you out of those.”

“Why? You put me in them.”

Nyx jerked back as if he’d been struck by lightning. The abrupt movement made Noctis cringe and raise his hands to his face, as if to protect it from an incoming blow.

And that made all of the feeling drop out of Nyx like a thousand stones plummeting from a cliff. He was as hollow as a glass ball. As if someone could tip him over with a single finger and he’d shatter into a million pieces on the cold stone floor.

Prompto looked frantically between him and Noctis, one hand extended towards each. He eventually prioritized Noctis, like Nyx would rather he do, and crouched low beside the prince. He tried to make himself look as non-threatening as possible, palms turned towards him. Like approaching a scared animal.

“Noct, it’s alright, i-it’s us…”

When he looked at Prompto it wasn’t with the terror he looked at Nyx with. A wave of anguish crested through him, ripping out a whine of despair as he pulled his hands through his hair and dug his fingers into his head. As if he were trying to claw his way inside of it.

“No no no,” he muttered into his knees. “You’re not here… You’re not real…”

Prompto’s arms fell to his sides, his gaze horrified as he cast it back to his friends, as if they would have the answers. Gladiolus was as still as a brass idol, staring at Noctis as if he didn’t recognize him. Ignis’s grip on his cane was knuckle-white, face jerking between the different voices in the cell, silently desperate to see what was going on. Nyx almost envied him that he couldn’t see the state Noctis was in, making himself as small as he could, packed into one corner, rocking back and forth like a lost child.

“This is the chancellor’s doing, no doubt,” Ignis murmured, voice low.

The words crackled at Nyx’s brain, sent sparks of fury racing beneath his skin. He’d been watching the room as if it were separate from him, as if he was very high up and looking down at it. The image of Ardyn’s smiling face, laughing at all of them, brought him crashing back down.

“I’ll kill him!”

Nyx marched at the cell door, blood running hot with hatred, and seeing the world between tinges of red. He’d been prepared for mortal injury, something he could fix, something he could bandage up and nurse back to health if he had to. He’d imagined terrible mutilations, the most deplorable types of torture, horrors that not even the daylight could burn from behind his eyes.

But, _this…_ This was worse than all of it. He couldn’t _touch_ Noctis, couldn’t be in the same room as him. Whatever Ardyn had done, he’d made Nyx into the one that hurt him. How was he supposed to fix that? How could he be the hero Noctis needed when all he saw was his villain?

Gladiolus steadied a hand on his chest, like a five-fingered brick in his way. “I wanna open up that guy’s guts as much as you do, but right now, Noct’s the priority.”

“What are we supposed to?” Nyx snapped, his voice a snarl to his own ears.

“Ignis?” Prompto asked. “Do we have a potion or something or… _some_ thing?”

All eyes turned to the strategist while Noctis muttered desperate pleas into the dark. Ignis turned in the direction of his voice, his expression difficult to read without his eyes to define it. After a moment’s contemplation, he ventured over to the prince, kneeling down to Noctis’s level when he reached the edge of the bed. The blind man patted at the cot until the side of his hand grazed Noctis’s boot. The prince pulled his legs tighter to his chest, mumbles quickening in fright.

“Noct, it’s alright,” Ignis said, quiet and slow. “You’re right, whatever you’ve seen before now hasn’t been real. But, it is this time. What can we do to prove it to you?”

Noctis made a miserable sound and shook his head, convinced that the man in front of him was just a phantom. Ignis drew in a breath and Nyx felt himself draw one in too that he didn’t let out again until well after Ignis resumed speaking. He pitched the most casual tone he could into his words in an effort to help Noctis feel at ease.

“I’ve come up with a new recipe since you’ve been gone,” he said, something deliberately self-deprecating in the way he said it. Like it was an inside joke. Familiar and amusing. “I think it’ll appeal even to your picky tastes. And Prompto has a new photo he wants to show you. A new addition to this ‘seaside supermodel’ series he’s working on.”

Prompto gave him an uncomprehending look that had little effect on a man who couldn’t see it. The longer he stared at Ignis and took the time to catch up with his words, he seemed to realize something about them that brightened his fretful face.

“Y-Yeah, Noct! Remember that time on the dock? The ‘let your whole body talk’ thing? It’s like that, eeeexcept… I got your boyfriend to do it this time! Um, it’s hot, you’ll love it!” He blushed furiously at Nyx and swiveled around to Gladiolus to avoid the look he sent him. “And, uuuh, Gladio picked up another one of those dime-store novels and is just _dying_ to tell you what happens in the last chapter.”

Gladiolus cocked a brow at him, but went along with the claim anyway, quick to pick up on the strategy. “Yeah, Noct. This time, the guy’s been going through the whole story thinking he’s somebody else. It’s crazy, you’ve gotta read this one.”

They were all tiny, insignificant specks from their travels that no one but themselves would ever know. They were things that not even Ardyn could fabricate in his black-hearted fantasies. The truth was in the details, and it was working on Noctis. The tension slowly unwound itself from inside his muscles, his fingers unwinding from the knotted tufts of his hair. He lifted his face to look at each of them in turn, studying their faces as they spoke and becoming more convinced of their reality.

When it finally came down to Nyx, he was still a little cautious, his gaze struggling to stay upon him, deferring to the floor when he couldn’t. Very slowly, Nyx stepped over to the bed, telegraphing his movements and crouching down beside Ignis. Noctis tried forcing his eyes to stay upright, the deepest part of them hopeful that this was real, but still so terrified that it wasn’t.

“It’s going to be fine,” Nyx said to him, pushing on the smile he always used to make Noctis melt. “It’s all real. I promise, little king.”

No one knew that he called him that. No one but the two of them. And it allowed Noctis to look between them all with a hopeful clarity, recognition coloring his eyes.

“It’s really you?” he asked, more so to himself than to any of them.

“It’s really us, Noct,” Ignis told him. “Let Nyx help you out of those chains, and I think you’ll know for sure, won’t you?”

Noctis turned back to Nyx, eyes probing his face for faults that would prove this wasn’t reality. Hands still trembling, he extended them to Nyx, a ball of fear in his throat. Nyx encouraged him with the same smile he knew he liked and carefully found the lock again, mindful not to touch the prince until he was ready to be touched.

The shackles fell to the floor and Noctis startled, but didn’t move back. It was as if the clattering sound was wholly unfamiliar to him. Like something he’d never heard before. He stared at his unbound hands, at the cuts and bruises from where they’d strained against the metal, and then he stared at all of them. He turned his gaze from Ignis, to Prompto, to Gladiolus, to Nyx, lingering on him.

It was almost painful to stay so still when all he wanted to do was drag Noctis into his arms and never let him leave them again. But he knew he had to, especially when Noctis’s hands slowly reached for his face, fingers just barely ghosting over his cheeks before pressing fully upon them. He ran his thumbs through the short, scratchy hair along his chin, smoothed the rest of them over the rough skin, looking for every detail he remembered that reminded him he was real.

Nyx saw the spell break completely in his eyes, just before he bolted forward and hugged him, sighing deeply into his shoulder.

“It’s really you.”

Nyx practically smothered himself in the return embrace he wrapped him up in, days of worry washing out of him in a single sigh of relief. He even managed to laugh as Noctis said, in a watery voice, “Took you jerks long enough.”


	3. apparition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis runs from his greatest fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a request that I filled in this universe, working on what was going on with Noct while Nyx and the bros were searching for him

It’s not Nyx.

He knew it the second he saw him, despite how badly he wished that it were. Desperate as he was to see a familiar face, he almost allowed his mind to trick itself into believing the figure ahead of him was real. It was so easy to believe; so much harder to deny. But that was the whole point. That was why a predator was so dangerous.

He couldn’t turn around. He had to move forward. If he went back, he could be lost for gods only knew how much longer. The passage of time was nonexistent within the close walls of Zegnautus Keep. He could only judge the length of his capture in the haunted structure by the strain behind his knees and the scream between his bones when he collapsed on the abandoned cots nestled between the laboratories.

He was tired. He was starving. He was scared and he was angry and he didn’t know if the illusions that preceded his steps were made from his own delirious head or by his tormentor’s design. All he did know – kept repeating to himself over and over again in an effort to stay sane – was that he could trust _nothing_ in this place.

He knew the order of events. They were all cut off from him. The last he’d seen of any of them was Prompto’s face, open in a scream, as Noctis tumbled off the top of the train; was Ignis’s pinched scars as the daemon screeched; was Gladio’s hot glare of defiance, as if he planned to jump off the train after the creature with a vice around Noct’s ankle.

And of Nyx, the last he’d seen was fury and fear, a mirror to himself. Eyes a storm in the rain as the train made him smaller and smaller in Noct’s vision. Taking him away. He could still feel the howl of rage in his bones from the vanishing train as Nyx was stolen away from him.

The still figure smiling at him now was not that Nyx. _His_ Nyx would have run to him. His Nyx wouldn’t have smiled. His Nyx would have snarled into his hair, cursing anything that had tried to hurt him when he wasn’t there to protect him. His Nyx would have held him so tight that it hurt. He wouldn’t have stayed at a distance. He wouldn’t have waited for Noctis to come to him.

Noctis held what ragged control he had over the Ring close at his fingertips, approaching the impostor with caution. He couldn’t be sure if it was an apparition or a daemon or Ardyn himself masquerading as his lover. Whatever _it_ was, he knew not to risk getting too close. If it was a daemon, a blast of holy magic and he could keep moving forward. If it was Ardyn, he didn’t know what else he could do but turn around and run. If it was a figment of his own mind… he was even less sure what to do then.

He waited for the thing to pretend at being Nyx. It smiled, slow and sweet and so much like the man he loved that he was already arguing with himself that he was real. But it was wrong. That smile in this place. All of it was _wrong._

“Hey there, sweet thing. You finally found me.”

“Shouldn’t you have been looking for me?”

“Can’t do all the work by myself, can I?” he chuckled, deep and throaty and rumbling in Noctis’ own chest. The smile was right, the sound was _so right_ , but the words were wrong. “I look for you, you look for me, and we find each other. Right?”

_Wrong._ “And the others? Lose them like you lost me?”

The false knight frowned, brows closing together. Disappointment was always subtle on Nyx. He held his pain far back behind his eyes. The small pains, anyway. The lectures for saving a life instead of losing it and earning probation because of it. The disdain of a whispering racist if he dared to share the same sidewalk with them. The avarice of his displaced friends ranting against the same Crown that shared his bed. Nyx’s dismay always appeared in a tightening around his lips, a stillness over his face, and a distance in his eyes. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. This wasn’t Nyx.

“Ouch,” the not-Nyx murmured. “I did my best, but you’ve been wandering around this place. You know what it’s like. Easy to get lost in here.”

“Easier to stay close,” Noctis growled, ringed fist tightening at his side. “Where are they?”

“Honey, don’t you think I would have them if I –”

Noctis’ hands struck forward, grabbing it by the collar, even as his brain was screaming, _don’t touch it, don’t touch it! Don’t touch anything that isn’t Nyx!_ But he wanted to strangle it. Strangle the _right_ words out of its throat or just choke it for daring to pervert them. There was no “I did my best” with Nyx. He was all in or he was nothing. He pursued his goal so far and so hard that it could damn well kill him if he wasn’t careful. But if that was what it would take, Nyx would do it. He didn’t give up because that was “the best he could do.”

“Where are they! Where is _Nyx_! Take me to them or get out of my way!”

The thing grew wide-eyed as Noctis grabbed it. And even though he knew – _he knew_ – that it wasn’t Nyx, there was still something about seeing fear in those eyes – fear of _him_ – that made his heart drop like a stone in his chest.

“Noct, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I tried…”

Noctis shoved it away, hating this pitiful farce of his knight. He wanted it gone. He wanted _Nyx_. And he wanted this simpering caricature to feel how his own soul burned with his hatred for daring to steal the face of the man he loved. Noctis poured all of his fury into the Ring, the light of the Lucii burning through his blood as he grappled with their power. A staggering white glow blasted from the Ring, blinding the both of them. He watched the thing with Nyx’s face wrench backwards, just catching the twist of its features into a daemonic sneer before the light forced him to cram his eyes closed. There was a loud crack and then, stillness.

For a horrifying moment, Noctis was afraid he would open his eyes to a dead Nyx, scorched at his feet. He was afraid that he’d been driven so mad by everything that he might have mistaken the real Nyx, _his Nyx_ , for a daemon and killed him in his insanity. But when he opened his eyes, there was nothing in front of him. The way was clear.

His breath shuddered past his ribs, but he didn’t feel relieved. The imprint image of Nyx’s face, screwed up in hatred _for him_ , just before the light engulfed them both, made Noctis’ blood freeze in his veins.

* * *

Noctis continued to weave through the black maze, hounded by the Chancellor’s voice and accosted by daemons at every hint of progress he made towards a goal he couldn’t even see. _Just keep going,_ he coached himself. “Just keep going,” he would murmur under his breath from time to time, just to hear a voice other than Ardyn’s over the unseen speakers overhead.

He was trying to stay quiet, trying not to let the man see the effect that his childish taunts were having on him. He was trying to be brave like Gladio had trained him to be. He was trying not to think about how dangerous these tight corners might be for Ignis. He was trying not to imagine Prompto, with all his smiles and light, being smothered in this dark place.

He was trying _so hard_ not to beg for Nyx to find him, but he had to do this on his own. Nyx was with the others. They were all together. Looking out for each other. _Please come look after me._ The silent plea sounded like his child’s voice, the boy he always fought to keep buried under quiet and covers. The whispers from the Ring chased the boy closer and closer behind the prince’s mouth, pushing him into the waver of his lips and the falter of his heart the longer he went without a comforting voice to greet him at the end of the endless tunnels.

By the time he saw Nyx again, he was afraid he might have been driven crazy enough to believe it was really him. This version of the pretend Nyx was different than the last. Driven a little crazy itself. It was shaking when Noctis turned another corner and found it standing there. Its face was twisted in a parody of Nyx’s grief. Its jaw trembled underneath the weight of its teeth clamped down on a sob. Its eyes were wet, glistening like melting icecaps. And it still wasn’t Nyx.

He’d seen Nyx in his despair before. He’d held him through his grief – on the anniversary of his sister’s death, after the ceremonies honoring fallen Kingsglaive that he’d fought beside, on the nights where he woke up with collapsing breaths and sweat-slick skin and crumbled against Noct’s shoulder to hide from all the horrors that beat him in his nightmares. _It wasn’t like this._ It wasn’t sniveling and whimpering and waiting to be held. It was a roaring rage of blood and sweat and salt for hating his own tears as much as he hated the deaths that plagued him.

This _thing_ was too restrained to be Nyx. It tried too hard to cry, whereas Nyx always tried so hard not to.

“You _hurt_ me?” it whispered, voice clenched like a fist in its throat.

_It’s not him._ Noctis threw up the thought like a shield, slamming it down to keep the frightened child running through his blood from plunging towards the face that kept him safe. He wouldn’t apologize, he wouldn’t beg for forgiveness, he wouldn’t throw himself at this lie and sink into a warmth that wasn’t true. He couldn’t let this place make him so desperate as to disgrace his love of Nyx by believing the lie of him was real.

“I thought you loved me. Where did I go wrong?” His voice was so rough and _sounded_ so much like Nyx that it scraped inside Noctis’ own throat. It was infecting him, warping what he knew – _he knew_ – was real. That it _was not Nyx. Do not believe that it’s Nyx._ “Noct, just… tell me what I did. Tell me what you want me to do to make it better. I love you, it’s okay, alright? I’ll forgive you, just… come here.”

It stepped towards him, arms outstretched and smile so soft and sweet and forgiving him. Noctis stumbled back, his sore knees buckling under the strain of walking and crouching for so long through the cramped halls. He winced when the dormant pain in his back flared up, throwing his hand out to balance against the wall.

The not-Nyx lurched forward to catch him and Noctis wanted to scream. _Get away from me!_ Hands curled around his arms and they were so _cold._ One cupped above his elbow, the other wrapped around his wrist, holding the hand bearing the Ring away from them both. Pretending like it was such a doting gesture, like he was supporting him, when they both knew he was trying to bind his hands from using their power.

He could touch him… _Why_ could he touch him? It wasn’t a figment of his imagination if he could _feel_ it on him. It couldn’t be a daemon, it couldn’t hold his hand so close to the Ring without getting burned, could it? Was it really Ardyn himself, then? Trying to trick him like he’d been doing from the beginning?

Panic coursed through him, lost from his thin control as he was cornered. Trapped beneath those deranged eyes, so familiar and so yearning for his acceptance and still so _wrong wrong wrong._

“Why are you looking at me like that?” the thing cried. “Why don’t you love me anymore? I can make it better, Noct, baby, just tell me…”

A hand reached for his face and he would rather scream and cry and admit everything that he knew he shouldn’t than have that thing touch him where only Nyx was allowed to. So he did.

“You’re scaring me!”

He shouldn’t have confessed that he was afraid. That was what it wanted to hear, he knew that. But it was so hard not to start screaming. It was so hard to keep the kid crying in the back of his throat from overwhelming him. But if Nyx wasn’t there to keep him safe, then he had to keep himself safe. He couldn’t lose his mind. Not now. _Please, not now._ He begged himself not to break, but his voice betrayed him, cracking on an unshed sob as he looked up at those horribly familiar eyes.

“You don’t scare me.”

That was what the truth was supposed to be. Nyx didn’t scare him like this. Nyx didn’t make him want to run away. He didn’t make his skin crawl and cold sweat break out in the small of his back when he was this close. His eyes didn’t narrow like _that._ He didn’t grip his wrist that hard and wrench it up between them to curse the ring on his finger with such spite in his voice.

“You think _you’re_ scared? You think that _this_ wasn’t scary to me when you threw it in my face? This stupid thing is what’s coming between us, Noct. Ever since you took it you’ve… you’ve been drifting away from me. Haven’t you felt it? They’re trying to drive us apart. They don’t want you to love me. They’re turning you against me! Just take it off, Noct, it’s not too late. Just throw it away, I’ll forgive you, I…”

“Stop it!”

Noctis threw a broken spell of light between them to get the thing off of him. It was weaker than the last, shattering beneath his fractured resolve, but it was enough to get its hands off of him. Enough for him to trip over his own feet, scrape his palms against the cold floor, before he could reign his aching body together and _run_. A feral roar followed him and the thump of a fist against the wall.

Noctis didn’t stop running until his feet hurt so badly that it felt like they were bleeding. He tumbled into one of the stock bedrooms, the door making a dissatisfied hiss behind him as he slid to his hands and knees in the clinical safety of the room. He crawled to the hard metal frame of the bedpost and clung to it, chest heaving and an icy sweat plastering his shirt to his torso. His muscles shivered with exhaustion, legs crowded uselessly beneath him as they tried to recover from the shock. His bad knee was screaming as loudly as the child wailing deep inside his chest.

Part of him wanted to scream. Part of him wanted to rail against the walls of the rooms, claw at the bare cot of the bed next to him, throw whatever he could get his hands on, and just destroy something in revenge for letting the Keep take him apart like this. Another part of him just wanted to curl up right there on the cold floor and cry. Because as much as that thing wasn’t Nyx, was just a lie, it was _right._ He never wanted the Ring. All he wanted since putting it on was to take it off again. It scared him the most out of everything. It scared him more that the thing _knew._

His breaths came heavy and ruined, and it was a long time before he could find his voice enough to whisper to himself. “Breathe. Easy. Inhale. It’s fine, you’re fine, it’s going to be fine… exhale. Just breathe, come on.”

He put Nyx’s voice over the words. He made himself remember the true sound of his voice, the patience in his words, the steadiness of his hand on his back as he talked him through whatever it was that made it hard to breathe. Nyx was still out there. He was still looking for him. He couldn’t sit here and give up when Nyx never would.

Nyx needed him.

They all needed him.

…But he needed them, too.

A small whimper tangled itself between his breaths and that was all it took to get him to break. He allowed himself one minute to cry. Just one. Sixty painful breaths for sixty seconds of breaking apart like that thing wanted him to.

Then, he got up and tried again.

* * *

It wanted to kill him this time.

It had a knife that wasn’t one of Nyx’s knives, but it spun and threatened with it the same way Nyx did. The steel glinted as cruelly as the sharp eyes that now loathed him. Its skin was white as snow now. Black tear-tracks spilled from its eyes, surrendering all pretense since Noctis had refused it as true. He wished that was more comforting to him than it was. The thing still frightened him.

While not Nyx, it represented an idea of him that Noctis had never known before that he had feared. An idea that Noctis could be the one to ruin him into this torn and hateful creature that stalked towards him. That by using the Ring and following the Lucii’s bidding, he could somehow turn Nyx into this. He could make him into everything he feared. Destroy the best thing that the world had ever deemed him worthy to have as his own.

The thing’s voice was a scourge-soaked drawl as he growled at him, his name sinister and black on its tongue. He knew he could have stood there and fought. He knew he had thousands of years worth of power at his fingertips that he could use to fight the thing off. But when he probed for the haughty voices that had judged his worth to use the Ring, he found them hushed. Denying him their magic for daring to succumb to his weakness. For being too afraid to face the truth.

That this _was_ Nyx. This was what he could make him into. This was what he could sacrifice to follow whatever destiny was being whispered in his skull.

And he didn’t want it to be.

He ran from it like he always had. He ran from a duty he’d never fully understood, but had always known the cost of. Everything he had ever wanted, he would have to give up for it. All of his friends, his family, his love that he’d never seen coming, but never wanted to let go, all of it could be lost to him. He could break it all apart. And he didn’t want to pay that price. He knew it was selfish and horrible and that was what this Nyx represented. He wasn’t Nyx, but he was everything Noctis was afraid of admitting about himself. That he would give up the world if it meant he got to keep all of these things that made him happy.

He wasn’t fast enough to escape this truth. He bumped into corners, bruised his shoulders, tripped, and stumbled and made a fool of himself in the face of this thing he hated and loved so much. Such a fool that it laughed, cold, right on the back of his neck, before curling claws around his neck and choking off his cries until the black walls at the edges of his eyes turned blacker and vanished completely.

* * *

When he woke up, he was in chains. And the Nyx that was Nyx but wasn’t was there laughing at him. It was horrible, all splitting skin and blue-black veins, eyes so pale they were white on white. He played with a knife like he’d watched Nyx do a thousand times at warm camps, joking through the night over a home-made meal. It raised the tip of it to Noctis’ face, freezing him in place.

“I know, sweet thing,” it hissed, dragging the serrated edge through his hair. “The truth is ugly. And you’re beautiful.”

It left him there, words echoing in the hollows of his mind.

* * *

It brought his friends with it when it came back.

They reached for him, perfect and full of light and beautiful like the lies he’d made them out to be. Even Nyx was perfect again. Beautiful, golden-brown skin, dark ashy hair, a soothing stare that made his heart cry where he couldn’t summon tears to his eyes to cry for him.

He wanted him to be real. He wanted this to be his truth. He wanted the truth to be this beautiful.

They talked to him so sweetly. They told him all of those beautiful lies that he used to be so certain were truths.

And then Nyx said the one truth he knew was beautiful. It was the one truth that reminded him that the others weren’t lies just because they were beautiful.

Nyx called him by his name. His “little king.” And it was the only thing he was certain of. The only thing he knew that was real. The one thing he could never ruin, that he would never let himself ruin.

Nyx undid the chains around his wrists and Noctis knew that he was real. That he hadn’t hurt him, that he couldn’t hurt him. Because this was the real Nyx. The real Nyx was impossible to break. Because he’d been broken too many times before. All of those fault-lines bound him tighter together, hardened his skin and softened his heart for Noctis to find shelter in from himself.

He grabbed onto _that_ truth, a beautiful truth, and he didn’t let go.


End file.
